I’m lucky enough to get to work often with VR audio as part of my job, so it’s exciting to see it getting more of the attention it deserves as the VR market explodes. Enda’s post is a great rundown of how audio can be captured and rendered for VR and well worth checking out. I’m looking forward to catching the upcoming performance in April to see the result of the work that Enda and crew have been working towards.

I’m not sure there’s much I can add to the quote in the title, because what more do you need! Youtube user fastythefastcat built a guitar playing robot using a basic Lego Mindstorms kit and it’s a great addition to the mechanical music files. The top comment on the video gives a little more background.

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Dial-Up Modem? What the heck is that? Just kidding, of course – unless you were born in the late 90’s or later, you’ll be familiar with the sound of a dial-up modem handshake. This is the sequence of tones and noises that two remotely connected computers use to figure out each others capabilities to set

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The Human Harp is a project using movement of a performer connected to the interface to create music and ‘play’ the bridge. The interface is a number of modules with string/sensors which attach to the performer. The sensors capture the rate, length and angle of the string pull and translate those movements through Max/MSP to produce synthesized sounds via granular synthesis. The inspiration for artist Di Mainstone was looking out over the Brooklyn Bridge and thinking how much it looked – and sounded through the hum of the cables in the wind – like a harp.

“As I listened to the hum of the steel suspension cables, the chatter of visitors and the musical ‘clonks’ of their footsteps along the bridge’s wooden walkway, I wondered if these sounds could be recorded, remixed and replayed through a collaborative digital interface? Mirroring the steel suspension cables of the bridge, I decided that this clip-on device could be harp-like, with retractable strings that physically attach the user or Movician’s body to the bridge, literally turning them into a human harp.”

Flying Drone technology has become cheap enough, and more importantly, precise enough to have the sort of control necessary to play mechanical instruments, albeit with some modifications. This is a really cool video of drones doing just that. From the original Wired story – The show comes courtesy of KMel Robotics, a startup founded in